Brooks Bayne writes a scathing review of the National Tea Party Convention scandal. He’s quite right in noting how there are no known and respected Tea Party activists involved with this convention.
The problem is, as I’ve stated many times on Twitter, the Tea Party wasn’t involved with this convention. There may have been a couple local Tea Party folks participating, but none of the real players in the movement were involved. If you’re asking how I have the inside skinny on all this, then you haven’t been paying attention to the movement over the last year.
This “convention” was about one guy, attorney Judson Phillips, and, in my opinion, his attempt at personal gain. What was he thinking? Just because Phillips was the guy who reviewed Michael Leahy’s ridiculous lawsuit filing (not ridiculous that it was filed, it needed to be. much of the substance of it, however, was ridiculous. I question Phillips’ capacity as an attorney if he greenlit that filing) against some Internet trolls last year, he’s suddenly part of the movement? Uh…I don’t think so.
He ends his post with this:
“You shall know them by their fruits.”
I suppose that’s the best way to approach this convention at this point– focus extra scrutiny on what comes out of this convention and where the money goes afterward.
Is the convention still going to happen? I certainly hope so. A lot of good, well-meaning people paid a lot of money just to hear Palin speak. I personally think that’s a giant waste of $549 plus travel expenses, but regardless, it would be much worse if this whole thing shut down and left the Phillipses walking away with a cool $300,000 in non-refundable ticket sales.
Mostly, I expect we’ll see a lot of really underwhelmed convention goers. And since I’ve personally experienced Judson’s ineptitude in event planning — for a man who merely showed up at the eleventh hour to the Tax Day Tea Party rallies in Nashville and Franklin last year, he sure has some C.O. Jones to take credit for it all — I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing complaints coming from convention goers themselves once this weekend gets started.
